I think it comes down to an experience I’ve had a decade ago,
which for most people is not that far away. Anyway, the
family was on vacation. We were staying for a night or two at a
boring camping ground in northern France, not much being there that
you could do.

Something catched my interest though: in the middle of the
campsite was the obligatory communal space, with toilets and
such. But in order to get to the washing rooms, you had to pass
through a simplistic brick building. Inside, it was almost empty,
rather cold, and stiflingly dark. There were roughly three light
sources: the small entrance door where you came from, the one
leading to the bathrooms, and giant cathode ray tubes beloging to
some arcade machines. No windows, no additional lighting. Your every
step reverberated and added to the noise coming from the arcade
machines.

I think most of the cabinets were switched off, save for an
arcade adaptation of Alien 3, called Alien 3: The Gun. How
very original!

Essentially, the game was nothing more than
an obnoxious rail shooter: the camera
followed a predefined path and disgusting monsters jumped right into
your face demanding to get shot. Just like U.S. residents protesting
police brutality.

In order to enhance haptical feedback, two heavyweight physical
guns were mounted on the front panel and connected to the game. They
made loud rattling sounds when shooting, which was especially fun
when two people had teamed up to play cooperatively.

And even the cabinet’s demo loop was scary; first it ran through
some automated gameplay and made lots of noises that sounded as if
your brain was being scraped out of your head. Then, suddenly, no
sound at all. A large SEGA logo appears and consecutively morphs
into an alien creature which then again morphs into the
game’s main title card. Then, a short introduction. Then, screeching
noises and gameplay. Repeat.

I’ve stuffed quite an amount of coins into this machine and had
lots of fun playing. That being said, I never got past the first
level – an embarassment which was made up for as soon as I found a
working emulator (and remembered that this game existed). I got
through the game on the second attempt, but it nevertheless left me
panting with raw nerves thanks to its acidic and aggressive
style.

Alas, that’s all there is to it. I wish there were modern games
like this one. You know, ones that are not too snobby to deliver
raw, edgy and just highly stylised brutality1. Fuck realism and fuck your
thirty-minutes-lasting cinematic cutscenes. Give me enemies that
make me shit my pants, you know, enemies such
as SUPER DOGBURSTER
or IRON TORTOISE!

Now please excuse me while I play The Last Express – a
game that is absolutely cinematic and therefore exposes me as a
giant bigot.

Sega excelled at this. They
were not afraid to use the cheesiest
of clichés, hyper-realistic trashy sprites and an excessive
amount of buttery smooth animations. Nintendo games ran at 60
FPS, but Sega delivered more than ᛉ̨̢̞̙͇̦̖̬͇̭͉̪͍̠̾ͧ̀̿ͣͮ̽̍̾̍͌͛͊ͨ͐̎̋̕ᚹ̇̓̌̋̌͐̀҉̡̯̝̹̤̰͈͓̺͓̩̫͖̤͙͇͍̞͎͜͡ᛩ̵̷̻̜͔̺̫̰͔̘͉͔͎̻̮̝̫̹̺ͣ̊ͮ̄͗͑̄͂̊ͣ͌̎͜ᛩ̸̴̨̝̞͙̩̼̼̰͕̱̩̣̦͊ͨ͋͋̎͒̊̀͝ͅ frames each
second.↩︎

Further reading and bonus
content

]]>practical hackinghttps://nt-5.com/pulp/ph.html2020-04-03T14:29:00+0200
In the spring of 2019, I was still living existing in
Hamburg, crammed into university with all the
other nerds.

Then, while I was busy doing nothing, a relative of mine
spontaneously gifted me with two tickets to a
Richard Stallman talk. In
Copenhagen! I thought this was a wonderful opportunity to get some
entertainment and explore Denmark, and so I
called Lars and invited
him to come with me. Being a free software fetishist, he approved.

In typical German fashion, our train had been cancelled while we
were waiting at the platform. We went to customer service and
asked about any alternatives to consider. They told us the the
next train was going to depart in three hours. Cool.

Eventually, we traveled on the now
defunct Vogelfluglinie,
first via train and – starting from Lolland – via bus.

Having passed a sleazy money exchange office at Copenhagen main
station, we hopped on a long and nauseating bus ride. After an
hour that felt like a full afternoon, we got off the bus in
Tingbjerg, which is
an utterly
depressing
and large
social housing project from ancient times. It consists of lots and
lots of houses in rows and rows and rows. Before seeing this, I
couldn't imagine a neighbourhood more uncomfortable than the one
depicted in Clockwork Orange, yet here we were. I could
virtually feel all the joy in life getting squeezed out of my
soul.

Luckily, our host didn't live right there. But it wasn't far away
either: she lived just across the river, and there it was just as
bad. Same Truman Show surrealness, but this time disguised as
high-rise buildings.

There was a Herbalife sticker on our host's door. Cool, I
thought, and we entered the apartment. The corridor was just as
bland as the environment, but our host turned out to be a friendly
middle-aged woman. She left us her living room as a refuge, and I
started to examine our temporary home.

It was bright, a little tacky, and there was a small
balcony. Inside, there were a television set, a rather old stereo
and these strange 80s-Pop-and-Rock CDs that float around your
grandmother's house, even though you never witnessed her listening
to them. The sparse shelves were filled with lots of random
books. I could spot a Bible, a Quran, books about sushi, an L. Ron
Hubbard book, and an English dictionary.

Wait, what?

I took a closer look. Split up over multiple shelves, there were
titles such as What is Scientology? (one copy in English,
two copies in Danish), Speaking from Experience, Based on the
works of L. Ron Hubbard, Handbog i Scientologi, and
what I assume is an art book, also attributed to L. Ron
Hubbard. Thinking that our host might be a scientologist crept me
out, but Lars didn't seem too concerned. He even straight up asked
her about it, and she took a great pride in coming out to us as a
Scientologist. Eventually, we found more and more cult garbage
floating around her apartment.

“Well, at least she will be out of the apartment soon”, Lars said.

“You better tell the truth”, I joked. “Imagine
if you overlooked something in the ad and she's going to stay here
with us all the time.”

— “OK, I'm going to look at it again. Just in case.”

His eyes wandered to the screen and rested there for a couple of
seconds. Then, he looked at me again.

“riiiiiiiiiight...”

We decided to go outside and get some food. There was not a single
supermarket in our neighbourhood, so we had to walk for about
twenty minutes to a dark, depressing, and expensive Fakta
discount store. Later on, we would eventually learn that this
seems to be a standard for Copenhagen. Just
about everything is dark, depressing and expensive.

We took an expensive bus (that
looked like a vehicle
from LazyTown) downtown. The sun had already set, and the
streets were surprisingly empty for a city this big. An icy blast
was blowing through the vast and weirdly oversized spaces between
the various monumental buildings. I did not feel well, and since
hunger settled in for both of us, we started looking for a
restaurant.

Difficult. First, we randomly turned left and right and found
ourselves in the middle of a shopping mile. Not a single store had
been open. There were no restaurants nearby either which seemed
very odd. After twenty minutes, we eventually found one in a dark
and grimy corner of the center. It was — surprise! —
expensive, but the food was ok.

Ever have one of those dreams where you are in need of a basic
thing (some water, your phone, etc.) that you just can't seem to
get ahold of? This is exactly how finding a restaurant in
Copenhagen felt like.

With the scientologist lurking around in the room to my left and
the view on overly pragmatic social housing to my right, I could
barely fall asleep. This anxious insomnia slowly faded though, as
we tried to maximize the time spent downtown and minimize the
hours we would stay in the apartment.

Richard Stallman's talk took place at Lundbeckfond Auditorium. The
entrance was a little spartanic: there
were tiny pieces of printed
paper to guide the audience members and there was a table with
free (as in: beer) stickers. Lars and I took some.

The talk itself was not overly newsworthy. Richard Stallman
discussed his
favourite topics, accompanied by cute grapics: freedom in
software, user's rights, et cetera. Interestingly enough, I felt
extremely missionary at the end of the talk and was offended by
the gaping injustices in the software ecosystem, so I guess he got
his point across pretty well. Him talking about smart vibrators
running proprietary software could have also been the cause. Or
the fact that he lotioned and massaged his bare foot while
talking.

I had my Emacs
manual signed and
tried to forget about the lotion incident by eating a large slice
of great pizza at Gastronomia
Italiana 5. Lars ordered a calzone which was also done very
well.

Back at the Airbnb. It's the last evening in Copenhagen, and I am
glad about that. In a relaxed mood, I go to the ██████ in order to
take a ████. But when flushing, I noticed the horror: the ██████
was jammed! I started to panic: there were no tools in reach to
make that shit go away, and I did not want to wake the
Scientologist under all circumstances.

I exit the bathroom and consult Lars, but he does not have any
idea either, except for "what if we just leave it that
way and get away as soon as possible?"

In desparation, I empty my suitcase, looking for something
waterproof like a stick, and eventually find the plastic bag that
I originally wanted to use for laundry. I could wrap this around
my hand and stick it down the ███! Perfect!

Then, I noticed a fairly large hole inside of the bag. "Well, we
could put lots of duct tape on it", Lars suggested; but we
couldn't find any in the apartment. Proceeding to empty my
belongings, I get ahold of my backpack, and the Emacs stickers
drop out.

We both exchange a couple of intrigued and disgusted glances and
then apply an oddly-fitting Emacs sticker onto the plastic
bag. During the application process, all I can think about is how
to justify this so I can keep on living. “This is what
Richard Stallman would have wanted”, I reckon,
“this is hacking!”, I reason.

I am so sorry, Richard.

I don't want to go into detail explaning what happened
next. Suffice it to say that:

The sticker did not prevent any water from leaking into the
plastic bag.

I make a mental note to never again go to Denmark.

]]>untitled museum posthttps://nt-5.com/pulp/museum.html2020-03-22T00:23:00+0100Just before that whole virus thing got
out of hand, Insa and I went to Hamburger Bahnhof. It is
a building located in Berlin and used to be the terminal station
for the Berlin-Hamburg railway, but these days, it houses a
contemporary art museum because there is no reason for anybody to
go to Hamburg.

Halfway through I noticed quite an appetite emerging in my
stomach, so we went to the next restaurant that seemed ok. In
Mitte, this task is synonymous to “locating the least
soulless hipster shoebox,” and I had almost settled on “let's just
starve to death” out of sheer principle.

We went back to the museum and spent some more time in there,
then bought a couple of edgy postcards, then went to Insa’s place
and wrote a postcard to David, a
mutual friend of ours.

“Most beloved David,

we've been to Hamburger Bahnhof for about 4 hours.
Ever went there? It flowed poetically, like a toilet.
Chickens on skin are appealing! Don't you think so?
Sometimes, tea cups have two handles.

Hopefully, Austria does not do any mischief!
Poetical greetings from Berlin~

Insa + martin”

At home, I tried to use the remaining postcards to enhance the
common bathroom.

Moments after I was done putting them on the wall, my flatmate
came in. First, she shuddered. After a while, she looked slightly
amazed and said something like “oh wow, that’s disgusting”, and
started to laugh.

Then, she made a shrieking noise.

“IS THAT A CHILD???”
— “I, uhh, I don't know”, I retorted.
— “I've had similar-looking underwear as a child!!”

But just when I was starting to feel bad about
this delicate situation, she calmed down
and came to the conclusion that it's art after all — and
therefore acceptable.

Phew!

]]>senile and brazenhttps://nt-5.com/pulp/senile.html2020-02-11T14:39:00+0100I am standing at a bus stop, waiting for my bus to arrive. In the
corner of my eye, I notice an elderly man, gesturing nervously. He
looks kinda wasted. It’s cold outside, and he is trembling under
his light sweater.

A woman wearing a hijab crosses my line of sight.

“Young woman, could you please –”, the man ejaculates before
being ignored.

The woman fades away in the distance and the man keeps gesturing,
asking the void surrounding him if someone could help him open his
door. Deciding to be spontaneous, outgoing and practical, I
approach him.

“Young man, could you please unlock my door for me?” –
“Sure.”

He hands me the key to the front door and continues talking. “You
see, I would normally do this on my own, but I am feeling pretty
weak… Just came back from the doctor. He put me in quarantine,
tells me I have been infected with this new virus, haha! Tells me
I have to stay at home for at least a week …”

In disbelief, I look down at his key in my hands, then again at
the man.

“And now you’re asking me to unlock the door with the key you
just touched.” – “Yeah, so?”

I sigh and stick the key into the keyhole. The man is turning
pessimistic now.

“Won’t work. I’ve tried many times.”

In a smooth motion, I unlock the door and it makes the typical
clicking sound.

“Aha, now you’ve done it!”, he shouts. – “What?” –
“You’ve broken the key! Go ahead and see if it comes out the
keyhole in a single piece!”, he blusters.

In another smooth motion, I turn the key counterclockwise for a
corner arc, pull it out in a single piece, and hand it back to
him.

“Ah! Oh! Well. I thought you would have broken it.”

I get away without saying a word and keep my murderous thoughts
to myself.

“Also, thanks again!”, he cat-calls at me.

Then I go home and wash my hands and the entire contents of my
jacket.

]]>Shared Fridgehttps://nt-5.com/pulp/fridge.html2019-11-18T13:00:00+0100
The worst thing about sharing a flat with other people is that
they eventually start storing their spicy cheese in there. It
always happens.

And after a while, everything in the fridge has adopted that
cheese smell, so that every morning when I want to check if my
raspberry jam has run bad, I inhale the dying breath of cheese.

I recently went to Egypt. I did not take the expensive notebook
with me, but instead opted for my old and reliable T400. It had
been manufactured before Lenovo decided to ditch the IBM-esque
look of the iconic series, which is why the model looks way more
dated than it actually is.

The security personnel at the airport decided to analyse it for
traces of explosives. Luckily, I did not carry any explosives with
me.

Back in Germany, I did not have the time to change laptops, so I
brought the T400 to university. That yielded some comedic value;
here is what people said about it.

(regarding the side)

Is that a telephone jack?
(Yes.)

Does it connect to a DisplayPort monitor?
(No.)

So where is the floppy disk drive?
(Haha.)

(regarding the lid)

Whoa, it still depends on hinges!
(Correct.)

Does that fluted surface serve any purpose?
(It's great for filing nails!)

(regarding the 4GB of memory)

Is it able to run Emacs without swapping?
(Yes, if only just.)

We should use it as a graphics processing server!
(💯)

(regarding the keyboard)

What does the ThinkVantage button do?
(Nothing.)

I wish they still mapped media functions onto the arrow keys.
(Never even noticed this!)

(regarding ThinkLight, in a well-lit room)

It's so bright; I am blinded now!
(...)

Furthermore, it is a lot more fun to use a Linux desktop on this
old device than on the newer T470p, which has a HiDPI display that
is hardly compatible with any piece of software or desktop
environment I would like to run. Sigh.

]]>NULLhttps://nt-5.com/pulp/null.html2019-02-02T15:18:00+0100
This is a post, because something has to be the first
post.